In 'Origin,' Ava DuVernay and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor seek the roots of racism

Ava DuVernay’s “Origin” takes a heavyweight work of historical and sociological inquiry and transforms it into a deeply humanistic drama and globe-trotting detective story

NEW YORK -- Ava DuVernay kept hearing she had to read “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.” She had Isabel Wilkerson’s book in galleys before it was published in 2020. Oprah Winfrey kept telling her to read it. But she put it off. It seemed an imposing read. Copies kept proliferating in her home.

“At one point, a high-profile director said to me, ‘I heard you got the book,’” DuVernay says. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, I got a couple copies.’ He said, ‘No, I heard you’re doing it.’ I said, ‘As in doing a movie?’ So I said I better read this.”

But even once she cracked Wilkerson’s book open, it took DuVernay a few reads before it really sunk in. “Caste,” a best-seller released shortly before the death of George Floyd, reframed American racism through historical stratifications of caste. “Race, in the United States, is the visible agent of the unseen force of caste,” wrote Wilkerson. “Caste is the bones, race the skin.”

For DuVernay, whose films ( “The 13th,”“Selma” ) have illuminated American history with rigor and passion, the thesis of “Caste” was eye-opening.

“I was so wrapped up with the idea of race as a Black woman. That was the lens through which I see myself and the world sees me,” says DuVernay. “That’s what I thought.”